A mediocre e-mail client is one of the major weaknesses of Nokia's Internet Tablet products. Nokia's mail program chokes on my IMAP inbox, hanging and crashing when more than about 200 messages are present. Some relief may be in sight for those who want an e-mail client that is open source and made of sterner stuff. The first beta of the new open source Modest e-mail client for Maemo has officially been released.
Modest was created through a broad collaborative development effort that involved developers from Igalia, OpenIsmus, and Nokia. The program is built on top of Philip van Hoof's Tinymail framework, which uses a modified version of Evolution's Camel library that has been optimized for environments with limited memory.
Modest is designed so that the user interface will still be responsive while it is communicating with the mail server, so it is less prone to hanging. Modest also has a finger-friendly user interface, support for IMAP IDLE, and a more intuitive account setup system.
In a blog entry Modest contributor Dirk-Jan Binnema comments, "Remember, modest is 100% open source software, released under a BSD-like license. It's not perfect, but we're working hard to make it the best mobile e-mail client." Comments from other Modest contributors can be found in their respective blogs.
The beta is available for download from the Modest web site. Bug reports can be filed in the Communication/Modest section of the Maemo bug tracker.
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